The Bears are going to unlock the secrets of the Oregon offense that Mark Helfrich’s longtime friend, Buccaneers coach Dirk Koetter, couldn’t pry from him a few years back.

New coach Matt Nagy sought someone with a different background in bringing in Helfrich, the former Ducks head coach and someone without NFL experience, as offensive coordinator. The key to a turnaround — and the long-term success general manager Ryan Pace talks about achieving — hinges on developing Mitch Trubisky into a top-level performer.

Nagy lauded Helfrich’s work with quarterbacks, which he did for nine years for Koetter at Oregon, Boise State and Arizona State, but he also is going to bring concepts with him for the Bears to consider as they begin constructing their offense. The Chiefs, where Nagy spent the previous five seasons, have been ahead of most NFL teams in blending in spread concepts that dominate the college level, and the addition of Helfrich should enhance that.

Koetter was the offensive coordinator for the Falcons when Helfrich visited during the offseason for the kind of idea sharing that is commonplace in the profession. Helfrich had some questions about what the Falcons were doing. Koetter, in turn, had questions about the Ducks offense, which was wildly successful at the time with Chip Kelly as head coach.

“He was picking our brains, and I was trying to pick his brain,” Koetter said. “And when he was working for Chip, they were so secretive, the questions I wanted to know, he didn’t really want to give me the answers. At that time, they were ahead of the curve. Now, a lot more people are doing it, but he was on the ground floor.”

The primary questions Koetter had were about timing and how the Ducks were able to communicate while operating at such a frenetic pace to keep defenses in a “chaos situation.” Don’t look for the Bears to run a fast-break offense, the kind of thing that created problems for the Eagles defense when Kelly was their head coach, but there is certainly a time and place for up-tempo attacks, and there is more Helfrich can add as the Bears create their offense.

Helfrich, 44, and Koetter had multiple discussions about the NFL after Helfrich was fired at Oregon in November 2016. He spent this last fall as an analyst for Fox Sports.

“When I’ve talked to Dirk about that — coaching in college versus coaching in the NFL, his answer before I could finish the question was ‘NFL,’ ” Helfrich said. “Coaching and football, it’s the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re coaching Pop Warner or 15, 20, 30 years in the NFL. It’s coaching guys who hopefully want to be great and getting that out of them.”

It’s still an adjustment in moving from one level to the other and Helfrich will have to navigate that. What’s interesting is the Bears bring together a real mixture of backgrounds with his addition. Nagy’s NFL experience is rooted in the West Coast offense that Andy Reid has run so successfully for the Eagles and Chiefs. Helfrich was at the forefront of the spread offense with Kelly and before that he was schooled in the Air Coryell concepts that Koetter has used throughout his career. It’s a chance for the Bears to pick and choose what they like as they build a playbook.

“There is a learning curve for sure, but Mark is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever come across,” Koetter said. “Forget football coaches, just smart in general. When we hired Mark as a (graduate assistant) at Oregon, he was coming to Oregon as a GA as opposed to going to med school at Stanford, so that kind of puts it in perspective how smart he is. Or maybe that’s how he’s not smart.

“Some people they need to either have the film in front of them or you have to be drawing it up on a grease board for them to understand what you are talking about. Mark is a guy you can just be sitting across the table from and he gets football. He can envision it. Very, very sharp guy.”

Nagy said as he researched options for his staff before interviewing for head coaching jobs, it became apparent Helfrich was someone he wanted to join forces with.

“As you could tell from some of the things we did in Kansas City offensively, we were trying to be a little bit out of the box and new wave type of stuff,” Nagy said. “So we talked a little ball, we talked philosophy, we talked about his situation and knowing whether or not this is something he wants to get into coming from such a great background in college and being the head coach of a prominent program to come here and help me grow not only as an offensive coach but as a head coach. I thought that was very valuable.”

Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio locked horns with Helfrich and Oregon when he was the defensive coordinator at Stanford, so he has an idea what the Bears are getting.

“They were ahead of their time,” Fangio said. “They had an X and O advantage (and) a method advantage that people hadn’t caught up to at that point.”

Those methods Koetter once found difficult to get out of Helfrich now will be proprietary material for the Bears.